


Sinistar

by Insecuriosity



Category: Sinistar (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Humanity, Immortals in Space, Sinistar - Freeform, Space Marines, based on the arcade game, endless fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:58:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8247917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insecuriosity/pseuds/Insecuriosity
Summary: Based on the arcade game; Sinistar. Mike, age thirteen, had seen Sinistar shatter into useless bits the first time that humanity battled it. Now, twenty-five years later, Sinistar has become visible from Earth's surface. Keeping the creature at bay is all that humanity can do, and Mike is one of the next pilots to go up against Sinistar...Who knows, maybe the time he buys humanity, will find a more definite solution?





	

There are only three ships left.

Mike fumbles with his thumbs as he watches the latest pilot enter one of the ships. The crowd around him waves and cheers, but the mood is tense and anxious. The pilot won't be coming back, and everyone knows.

The announcer on the TV praises the pilot's bravery, and the camera closes up on the man's face. The smile he wears is half a grimace, half fear. Mike takes his cigarette out of his mouth to tap it in his ashtray.  
On TV, the door of the ship closes, and a few moments later the ship’s engines distort the air with their heat.

 _“The fight against Sinistar continues, as our brave nation comes ever closer to finding a solution, and as our even braver pilots keep the monster at bay.”_ The announcer states, and tragic yet heroic music begins to play as the pilot engages the ship and takes off into the starry sky.  
The camera follows his trajectory, and shows off the enormous empty hangar that all the previous ships had been standing in.

 _“Once again, our government urges anyone with free time to think of a solution to our world-wide, no, galaxy wide problem.”_ The announcer concludes, repeating a message that has been burned into everyone’s minds since childhood. _“No expense shall be spared by our government, to ensure the safety of all humanity.”_

Mike takes a drag of his cigarette, and nervously bounces his leg as the channel cuts into a commercial.

If this pilot dies, he is the next in line to fly out there. To fight Sinistar.

Mike clearly remembers the first time that the word of Sinistar had reached the human worlds. Rumours, at first, and then leaks on the galactic connection. A huge, robotic, animalistic _thing_ , crunching down on ships and planets as if they were bite-sized snacks, and soaring through open space with more speed than should be possible for something so massive.  
It had all seemed like a rather interesting piece of lore – right up until the first footage of a Sinistar attack reached Earth’s datanet. 

Complete and utter carnage, complete with an on-planet viewpoint, as Sinistar consumed the planet’s three moons…. And finally the rest of the planet.

There had been panic, there had been denial, there had been conspiracy theories- the whole shebang. And finally, the governments of Earth and the colonies had been spurred into action. Watching the monstrosity tearing a planet apart with steel teeth was enough to put ill-will between nations on hold, at least for a while.

The announcer had been right on one front- the human governments hadn't spared any expense. The first attack on Sinistar had been a glorious show of firepower. Good soldiers, great craftmanship, top of the line AI... and an entire fleet composed of just that. The deaths of other planets and races had been studied arduously to find weak-spots in Sinistar, and to develop effective weaponry against it.   
The final result, after many tests, had been dubbed the 'Sinibomb'. The very embodiment of human ingenuity, made into reality with more cash than the entire US spent on hamburgers each year. 

The entirety of the human alliance had collectively held its breath as their fleet had neared Sinistar's location.

Weapons had been readied, evasive manoeuvres were on a hair trigger, and all the scanners were locked on Sinistar's location.  
He had burst into range with a metal-shaking shriek, loud enough to vibrate even the slightest traces of matter in the void, and the fleet had fired with all they had.

The event had been live, (supposedly), and Mike, age thirteen, had seen Sinistar shatter into useless bits of scrap under the onslaught. Only one squadron had been lost, and the rest had returned in a haze, drunk on victory.  
One of the scouts had manoeuvered the debris, and had carried back the very tip of one of Sinistar's fangs.

Nobody had thought that it would be that easy!

Of course, nothing that’s good lasts. The elation had been short-lived. None of the other alliances or living creatures in the galaxy seemed to join in with humanity's elation. Indeed – the other alien races and alliances had only sent more warnings. Humanity had very soon found out why.

Sinistar rebuilt itself from scratch. 

Like the story about the earthworm, a single intact piece of Sinistar was enough to allow it to live again. Builder-drones of an unknown design would swarm in, and begin rebuilding- using whatever material they had on hand. (Often, it was the charred and broken remains of the planets that Sinistar had consumed before its destruction. )

By the time that the human alliance had turned their eyes back on the site where Sinistar had been destroyed, it had already been halfway to being rebuilt.

Cue a second panic. Protestors out on the streets, fear and rage everywhere, and every soldier back to war. There wasn't as much of pressure on the development of this time. Everyone thought; 'destroy the builders, and Sinistar is no more'.  
If only.

Mike stood, and lit up another cigarette. There were some messages on his phone, but he hadn't listened to them yet. His courage was all reserved for his turn against Sinistar.

The builders were the main problem. Red, useless things, easily disabled with any kind of weapon, and stupidly single minded. All they did was mine, create bits of Sinistar, and weld them together. Even the protective shooters around them barely posed a threat. A few shots, and they were down.  
The problem was just that they never. stopped. coming.

The mighty Earth fleet had destroyed Sinistar for the second time. That time, there was only some minor damage to some ships. The fleet stayed near the debris, to fight off the builders.  
Days had turned to weeks, weeks had turned to months- but the builders continued to come again and again. 

Finally, the ammunition and energy ran out, and all of humanity had to watch as Sinistar was put back together.   
That time had been devoted to creating more sinibombs, and perfecting their destructiveness. We had destroyed Sinistar once before. A second time would buy us precious time…

And that is exactly how it went. Sinistar awoke, the human fleet fought, and after the battle was won, the repairdrones swarmed in again, endless and endless….

Mike often wondered what kind of insane alien species would create a thing like Sinistar. Was it an AI gone wrong? Was it just a single species’ hatred against the galaxy and its planets? A revenge scheme from a race that was long dead?  
Once, in one of his more.. inebriated moments, Mike had imagined that Sinistar was someone’s demented old house cat who couldn’t stop picking on their master’s ant farm. Sure, the ants could bite a few times, but the cat was always gonna come back… 

After Sinistar's second defeat, we began to send ships in order to find the origin of Sinistar's builders. As far as Mike knows, none of them ever returned, and yet the stupid builder-bots still keep on coming.

The third time that the human fleet was up against Sinistar, it ate a clean line through the ranks. Five squadrons were gone in a flash of those teeth – sucked in and obliterated. 

There was no more innovation to be had. The Sinibombs got more and more effective at destroying Sinistar, but Sinistar would just NOT stay down.   
Instead, it almost seemed to become more viscious. With every time it woke up, it seemed faster, angrier. And, unfailingly, ships, people, and weaponry were lost. 

It doesn’t make sense to keep throwing your a-game, when it doesn’t have an influence on the end-result. Why train hundreds of soldiers if a squadron could do? Why maintain a thick fleet of ships when Sinistar easily chewed through anything that was put in front of him?   
It was unsustainable… but we didn’t-…. We don’t want to die.

And that's how we landed on our current strategy.

One ship. Two pilots. Delaying.

Mike hadn't cleaned his bathroom in ages, and it smelled awful. There was still condensation on the mirror from his morning shower.  
Mike set aside his cigarette, and washed his face, trying to rub the cold anxiety from his skin.

The delayal-ships were just as good as the ones that had been used in the last fleets so many years ago. They could mine materials from asteroids, and create sinibombs on full automatic. They had an energy-powered laser that could destroy any builder or turret with a single well-placed shot! ….And they were about as sturdy as a roll of toilet paper when pitted against Sinistar.

All those ships, and all their soldiers, fell like flies before a flyswatter.

Mike shook his head. No. It just felt like they that. Every two pilots that were sent out, bought them more time. Some for months, others for just days.   
One pilot mined for sinibomb materials and shot away as many builders as they could, and then the other pilot took over their duties.

Mike can still hear the TV from within his bathroom, and a chipper commercial about injectable cigarette-nicotine reaches him as he takes another drag of his traditional electrical smoker.  
Sinistar is visible in the night's sky on some days. Just like the old Earth moon, if the light is right, the surface of that demon face shines like a beacon. 

It comes closer every time it wakes up. 

People have been praying to it, and Mike had seen pro-Sinistar slogans on walls as he walked towards his simulated training.  
Maybe it wasn’t going to be for naught. Maybe his efforts to keep Sinistar at bay, together with someone else from his squad, would be the final stretch of time that humanity needed to find a definite fix. 

Maybe that wasn’t true, but Mike held onto that thought, and imagined Sinistar shattering for the final time. He would take a piece of that fucking thing home, for displaying purposes.

Yep. That was how it was going to go down.

**Author's Note:**

> I just love Sinistar's voice. I wanted to make something with this guy.


End file.
